Spent the last week enjoying good winter skiing conditions at Valkyr Lodge near Burton, in the southern Selkirks. We got about 20cm of new snow throughout the week which was sticking fairly well to the surfaces below. Good powder skiing on N aspects as low as 1500m, and good skiing in the new snow on solar aspects until the sun came out and cooked things on Sunday.
In the Valkyr Range, the deeper surface hoar layers were harder to find and bonding better than in most other areas I have skied recently. We did a lot of digging and in general the test results on surface hoar were inconsistent and were we could find the surface hoar layers we got either hard shears or no results at treeline and below. This allowed us to get into a bit more aggressive ski terrain during the week although we stuck to terrain that had good planar/concave shapes and limited our exposure to bigger slopes throughout the week. I doubt that these results will translate well into the surrounding ranges...but it was nice to ski around with a bit more confidence after a month and a half of feeling a like a target.
No new avalanches other than sluffing after the storm on Saturday, and solar triggered sluffing during the heat of the day.
ACMG/IFMGA Mountain Guide
www.conradjanzenguiding.com